September Challenge: Darkware - Normal
 

Concept #1: Action Environment.
Genre: First Person Shooter (fps)

Hopefully I will be able to get started tonight.

And I'm just going to stick some information from Mike's first post on this post for easy reference in the future.....

1) Final textures must be no larger than 512x512
2) Characters are limited to 1 512x512 texture for the body, and 1 256x256 for the head
3) no limit for environments, but the average is around 10 512s or so
4) textures: 512x512, 256x256, 128x128, 64x64, 32x32, 16x16
5) use 1 unit = 1 foot
6) Environments would be approximately 50,000 triangles.
7) Characters approximately 1500.

Cool, Dark, looking forward to it. :)

Remember though, that as doing Concept #1, any characters you decide to do won't be a part of your entry. Not that you were planning on it, but just wanted to make sure. :)

Ah yes. I don't know why I stuck the character information in there. I don't like modeling characters, which is why I chose the Action Environment in the first place. I'm more into structures you see. Glad to see you're on your toes though, Mike. :)

Basic landscape completed, desktop computers completed, coke can completed, sattelitte completed.

Sky dome w/ repeating texture completed. (will surround entire level)

That's cool, man, but remember, you aren't responsible for the sky, basic terrain, etc.

Now, if you want to, at the end, in order to make a scene for yourself, that's fine.

Nice dish! I like the start, look forward to seeing how this one goes.

Ok. I'm not used to leaving stuff out like that, but I guess I really wouldn't be responcible for extra stuff like you say.

Computer terminal completed. 305 polys triangulated.

edit* - redesigned it to 271 polys triangulated.

Yeah, the game engine will create the "area." The level editor gives the level designers control over terrain, such as elevation and such. So, they make the terrain, and you make the objects they place on the terrain.

A little different from the normal solo artist, making everything and anything for his personal project, but hence the use of a team. :)

Looking nice so far! Looking forward to textures!

Duplicated terminals, railing completed, oversized monitors completed, ramps begun, basic room structure begun.

damn, this low poly thing is starting to look mighty fun. Looking very sweet - can't wait to see more. How about an inside, eye level (FPS shot)

Man! Your're almost done, and my software is not here yet....:(

Two (2) eye level (fps) shots as requested.

8 entries/exits created, two walkways w/railings completed.

Nice work so far man :)

Awesome start mate....

Looking nice man.

agreed. That is outstanding looking - does this mean that once you've textured it.. you're done? Wonderful!!!

No, not at all. I'm just getting started. I have a lot more to do. I'm only at 3,200 polys(yes, that's with it triangulated). My limit is 50,000. *grins*

Remember youve got to make a few rooms.

I know. I'm pretty much done with this big room. At school I drew out some designs, so I'm going to get started on those here soon. I plan on creating several different hallways that can be easily linked together like a puzzle as well. If you've ever messed with a level editor like the one in Time Splitters II, you'll know what I'm talking about. I might come back and add a few more details to this circular room later.

Hallway completed, 3-way junction completed, 4-way junction completed, ramp completed, basic hallway structure begun, bottling room begun.

This is looking awesome!!!

Really impressive!

The hallway pieces took the longest to do because I was forced to model them twice. The first time around, I thought I was doing good, but when I tried making a hallway from one exit of the circular room to another, it didn't match up properly. I could have easily scaled one of the hallways a little longer, but I wanted all of them to be the same size to I could apply the same texture to each one in the end and so it would be easy to create multiple hallways without fuss.

I found out the hard way that it is best to model the hallway pieces so that they all cover the same amount of units in width and length to assure that they fit together correctly. Also, because I had originally modeled the exits as squares, and because my new hallways were octogonal, I had to redo the thresholds, which took an eternity for several reason I will not cover in this post.

Just a piece of advice: Keep the majority of edges and vertices on a grid line when you are modeling several objects that are required to be hooked together. (snap them) This will save you a lot of trouble in the end.

Guess what? I'm going to have to redo the hallway stuff yet again.

I had just finished up modeling the bathrooms and added the ceiling last. I took a look at the vanities and said, "Hey, wait a second. That looks way too big. I couldn't figure out why it looked so big because i the demintions were that of a real vanity. Then it hit me - my ceiling was only 6 feet high. I made it this way in order to match the hallways which were also 6 feet high. I thenrealized that most hallways were around 8. I had modeled everything 6 ft high because of Mike's suggestion to make sure all thresholds were at least 4x6. I had unconciously taken this as a standard demintion for all doorways, room heights, and thresholds.

So, the next task was to make everything higher and wider. This was no sweat. All I had to do was select all hallways, freeze transformations, then scale the X and Z out. Obviously, this now causes them all to intersect each other because I had already placed them where I wanted them to be. The time consuming part will be to move them all back into place so this doesn't happen. What I'm really dreading is modifying the exits and entries on the circular room to ensure that the hallways match up perfectly, which I have already done once before.

Anyway, I'm sort of glad I made this little mistake because it has deffinetely been a learning experience for me. I have discovered so much so far. You wouldn't even believe it. I have found that I absolutelu love modeling in low poly. I view it as a challenge and it's actually really fun to try to make an object when you have poly limits.

One thing in particular I have learned much about is normals. Before, I was totally in the dark about this. I was always frustrated when some of my models had weird black spots on them when I smoothed them. Now I know how to fix them perfectly. Another thing I have learned is how to move several dozen objects a certain number of units on an axis without having to move each one individually. You can either group or select all, then freeze transformations. This really helps when I have to move 50 hallway pieces to fit something in somewhere else.

Although I don't have an image to show just yet, I have completed the toilets, vanities, stalls, and urinals for the bathrooms. Every secret base in the mountains needs a bathroom doesn't it?

Heh, cool stuff, Darkware. :)

What I meant by 4x6 was the minimum deminsions of doors themselves... the room they open into can be as big as you deem necessary. :)

Oh yes, I realize that now. I knew the rooms could be as big as I wanted. It was just the hallways I messed up on. The doors probably will be 4x6, but they'd look weird if the hallways were the same demention. I want my hallways to be a bit roomy instead of squished - even if it does mean doing a lot of stuff over again.

Anyway, here's an image. Although I don't plan on keeping the terrain, I included it in this image to inform the viewer of what parts of the base will be seen and what parts won't from the outside. Still have lots of work to do on the outside seeing as how I plan on doing them both.

And oddly enough, I built a little walkway around the exterior of the building a lot like Traveler did in his entry. Great minds think alike I suppose.

Ok. Feeling good now. Due to the fact that I did a good job in modeling the hallways (probably because I've spent so much time working with them, discovering errors, and fixing them), I have been able to completely resolve the hallway problem extremely quickly and am back on track making progress. I have created a few more hallways, done some major tweaking, and have decided to design and model another circular room, which will be placed directly above the one I have already made. I'll probably finish designing the bottling room first, then another layout fo a bathroom, maybe another main room, then do the circular room after all that. Currently, I am working the hallways up to the rooftop so players can access it that way. Also plan to build two helipads which will be placed on the opposite side of the mountain with the twin terrets.

KILLER job so far bud!

really nice darkware

i espessially like the loo it looks like it's going to be very detailed

look forward to seeing it more

alex

Hey, your doing this exactly like its supposed to be done! Great job so far!

Thanks for all the comments and encouragement guys. I have to admit that I feel ten times as motivated to model when I know there are people out there who are interested in my work. It's very uplifting. Thanks again.

Just want to add to all the compliments.

This is looking like a great level. Well done :)
Can't wait to see the textures go on.

Thanks Chris. Hopefully, I can start on the textures around the 15th of the month. First half will be modeling, and the last half will be texturing since I'm not that experienced in that field.

I have completed the basic design of the elevators finally and have finally gotten around to finishing the room with all the cyndrilical tanks. It's hard to find time to work on this thing with school.....

cool level
 

Hi Darkware,
I have enjoyed watching this take shape, looks awesome already. !! :D
And thanks for adding the comments, I'm trying to understand what this 'Freeze transformations' does at the moment, will have to wait until I'm off work again, then I will look into it more.

Regards Scraggy

Hey, I can tell you right now. Freeze Tranformations resets the object's coordinates to 0,0,0. It does not move the object back to the origin, however as you might think. An example would be for me to create a cube. Its 0,0,0 is directly on the origin of the grid. I can move it to 5,0,0. If I freeze transformations on it now, It will stay at 5,0,0 but in the channel box it will say 0,0,0. So in essance, the new origin for the cube is 5,0,0.

Difficult to understand maybe, but try it a few times and you'll figure out what it's good for.

Look forward to updates - I found the stuff on how you overcame the problems very interesting and helpful, thanks.

Mainframes completed, cubicals completed, hologram projector completed, elevators completed, cyndrilical tank room 80% completed.

The hologram projection will be similar to the ones found in games such as Metroid Prime and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. Basically, it's just a sphere with a targa image that is for the most part fully transparent for the exception of a few items such as planet orbit paths, planets, and other various things.

Don't worry. The red, yellow, and blue colorings for the elevator are not permanent. They serve a different purpose for an experiment I did which I will not explain now. Although the elevator system is deprived of a few walls, it does actually work in-game. The doors are located on the yellow and blue pieces. The actual elevator does not have any doors, however it does have a rectangle entance and exit which you cannot see in the images I have provided below. It's sort of hard to explain, but when you are in the player's view, you won't notice the difference.

The cyndrilical tank room is almost done. I have added railings and the tanks themselves, which took longer than one would have expected.

As for the hallways, which technically are not a part of this challenge, I deleted the entire system I had built since all copies were not instanced and rebuilt it with instanced copies since that's what Mike said would happen in the game anyway. All duplicates of any object are instanced. The same goes for all vertical railing pieces. I erased them all and instance copied them over again.

Container tank completed as well. I will probably model an alien of some sort of perhaps a human after the challenge and stick him/her/it inside and hook a few cables up to him/her/it on the arms, back of the neck, and legs.

Yes, I know. It's creepy.

Oh how I wish I could work on this project at school.....